


Smiling Through Tears

by IAmSorry__sendmeaprompt



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abusive John Winchester, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Bobby Singer, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Minor Angst, Minor Injuries, Possible Fluff, Protective Dean Winchester, So they have a more stable childhood, They still become hunters, Weechesters, Young Dean Winchester, Young Sam Winchester, bobby is awesome, but Bobby raises them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26720584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmSorry__sendmeaprompt/pseuds/IAmSorry__sendmeaprompt
Summary: Shania McAlister had just turned twenty-seven, was nearly a third of the way through her first year teaching, and was thinking that maybe she could really make a career of this whole thing when little Dean Winchester walked through her classroom doors for the first time.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 69





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I think I just have a thing for seeing the impacts our boys have on people's lives.
> 
> Disclaimer: not my characters, not my show, I don't own any of this, I'm just here for fun

Shania McAlister was twenty-six years old when she accepted a position as fourth grade teacher at the elementary school in Sturgis, South Dakota. It was a small school, but there were two other teachers in the fourth grade. Shania quickly bonded with each of them, as well as with her class of little ones.

She spent her free time coming up with new games and activities she thought her students would enjoy, reveling in the fact that her school district, while small, took good care of its teachers. She had Saturday brunch with a group of other teachers where they discussed all of life’s little problems. She even started going on dates occasionally. All in all, her life was more together than it had ever been before.

It seemed that, in honor of her first year teaching, she’d been assigned the easiest students. Her class didn’t have a single ‘problem child’; they were all on their best behavior. Some of them even liked to learn, which was rather more than she’d dared to hope for with a group of nine and ten year olds.

Shania McAlister had just turned twenty-seven, was nearly a third of the way through her first year teaching, and was thinking that maybe she could really make a career of this whole thing when little Dean Winchester walked through her classroom doors for the first time.

He was an adorable kid, all sandy hair sticking up in unruly tufts and big green eyes and ‘yes ma’am, no ma’am’. There was a tiny, rail-thin child clinging desperately to his leg, brown hair sweeping into pained hazel eyes. If Dean’s clothes were big on him, the little boy was practically swimming in his plaid shirt and jean shorts. The Vice-Principal, Mrs. Lancaster, stood behind them, looking somewhat harried. “Miss McAlister, this is your new student, Dean Winchester. Dean, say hello.”

Dean shuffled his feet awkwardly, looking anywhere but at Shania. “‘Lo,” he mumbled.

So he was a shy one. Okay, Shania could work with that. She put on her brightest smile and tried to sound as cheerful as she could. Inwardly, she was thanking God that her class was out at recess and not in the room demanding attention. “Hi, Dean! Who’s your friend, here?”

Jade green eyes met hers, flashing resigned determination. “This is Sammy. He’s my brother.” One of Dean’s hands was fidgeting with the cuff of his sleeve, the other was soothingly stroking Sammy’s hair. Sammy visibly tightened his grip.

Casting about for an idea to put the obviously uncomfortable children at ease, Shania knelt on the floor to look at Sammy. “Well aren’t you two just adorable!” she cooed, and offered her hand for Dean to take. “How about you let Mrs. Lancaster take your brother down to the Preschool rooms, and we’ll get you all set up with a desk?”

Mrs. Lancaster cast her eyes heavenward as Dean’s face shuttered down and he announced that his job was to protect Sammy, and that meant watching Sammy, and that meant he wasn’t going to let go of Sammy, no way, no how. Then she spoke up. “Dean, you’re in fourth grade. That’s too advanced for Sam. I’m sure he’ll get bored soon here. How about I take him to Preschool so he can have a nice day and learn things that are more on his level?”

After her little speech, Mrs. Lancaster crouched down next to Shania and addressed Sam. “Would you like that, sugar?” Sam looked up at Dean beseechingly, and the older boy shifted to make sure he was in between the two teachers and his little brother. 

“Sammy don’t talk.”

“It’s doesn’t talk, Dean,” Shania said gently, then “And why doesn’t he talk?” Internally, she was hoping against hope that the answer wouldn’t have anything to do with the faint bruise she saw crawling up the side of Dean’s neck.

“Just doesn’t.” Then Dean turned to look at the tiny boy clutching onto him like a lifeline. He spoke quietly, infusing his voice with the calm of a much older person. “S’okay, Sammy. You gotta go with her. I’ll come get you soon’s the day’s over.” Sammy blinked up at Dean, then slowly let go of him. Dean picked up his brother’s hand, fitting it snugly into Mrs. Lancaster’s. 

“Thank you, Dean. All right, Sam. Let’s go meet your new teacher!”

Dean stood in the doorway and watched as his new Vice-Principal led his brother away. Then he turned to look at Shania. She noticed almost immediately that he was slumping, bringing out an air of affected disinterest. With his brother gone, it was like he didn’t have anything to anchor himself to.

She wondered who this child was. Where were his parents? What kind of parent sent their young ones off to school in ill-fitting clothes in the middle of the day? And most importantly, where did that bruise come from and why was her new charge favoring his left leg?

She was broken out of her reverie by a small, defeated voice. “Okay, where do you want me?” And that was the last she heard out of Dean as she bustled around, getting him set up at a desk (he insisted on being at the back of the room, by the window), finding a workbook for him, and locating a few pencils and a box of crayons.

Then her class burst back in, chaperoned by one of her colleagues, and little Dean Winchester was pushed to the back of her mind for the rest of the day.

Then, about five minutes before three in the afternoon, he asked her if he could leave class a little bit early, “On account of I’ve gotta go get Sammy, and if I’m not there, he’ll be scared.” She was done for the day and fully caught up in the frenzy of matching coats to children, so she absentmindedly nodded. She only realized what he’d asked when he was already out the door.

She saw a flash of plaid whipping around the corner down the hall, and wondered at how well Dean already knew his way around.

Once she’d gotten the last of her children shepherded out to waiting parents in their cars, and delivered to the bus lot for transportation home, she tidied up her classroom. She couldn’t help but notice that the meager collection of school supplies she’d collected for Dean was arranged neatly in his desk, with almost military precision.

That just wasn’t normal.

And so Shania, overcome with probably too much curiosity, found herself marching into the front office and pulling Dean Winchester’s file out of the cabinet. She settled herself in and scanned the papers.

Dean moved schools a _lot,_ she noticed. He also had a history of behavioral issues, although past teachers also described him as vivacious, energetic, keen, and highly intelligent. Multiple notes had been made that his father, John, didn’t have much interest in coming when the school called. One little paragraph, handwritten in the margins of a grade report faxed over from a place in Oklahoma, outlined a third-grade teacher’s thought that he wasn’t altogether sure John didn’t leave Dean to fend for himself and Sam for days at a time. 

In fact, it had been shortly after he quizzed Dean on that very possibility that the boys had up and vanished once again, having only been there for a month and a half.

Shania pulled out Sam’s file next. His was much smaller. Apparently, one day at that school in Oklahoma, Sam had been a bubbly, happy preschooler, chattering at anybody who would listen. The next, he’d been silent as the grave, with Dean refusing to leave his side.

The day after that, they’d been gone.

Shania also noticed that the emergency contact on both forms was not any John Winchester, but rather a Bobby Singer of Sioux Falls.


	2. Chapter 2

Over the next two weeks, Shania tried her hardest to draw Dean out of his shell. She introduced him to other children, prodded him to play with them at recess instead of sitting by himself. She was also assigned an assistant, a young woman studying to become a teacher herself. She promptly told her new TA to focus on Dean as much as possible.

On the day before the scheduled Halloween party, the TA (a lovely Miss Jebbins) pulled her aside as she was supervising a spelling test, and told her she was pretty certain Dean had been traumatized. She pulled out a little notebook. “See here,” she told a very interested Shania, “he's said all of this stuff.” And indeed, there was a list of quotes that left a very unsettled feeling in the pit of Shania’s stomach. “Also, he shows a lot of the signs of PTSD. My grandpa had it, you know, and so I did some reading, and there’s something going on with Dean.”

Then Miss Jebbins and Shania had had to stop talking to go collect the tests, and Shania had assigned the class two pages done out of their workbooks. 

“And another thing,” Shania heard from behind her. “I think he’s dyslexic.” And, examining the spelling test Miss Jebbins was waving at her, Shania had to agree. After lunch, she gently led Dean to the office and explained that she wanted him sent to the high school guidance counselor to be evaluated for possible learning disorders. She also handed over all the evidence Miss Jebbins had collected that led her to believe Dean was being abused, and asked if CPS could please look into it.

Dean loudly voiced his protests, but when she told him to walk, he walked.

The next day, Halloween party day, two very important things happened. The first: as the members of her class filed in, dressed as princesses and cowboys and vampires, Dean tailed the rest of them in a beat-up leather jacket that hung like a dress on him, and a flannel shirt soaked in what Shania really hoped was fake blood.

“What an interesting costume, Dean!” she said, trying very hard to not look unsettled.

“Thanks. I’m my dad.” This was the first time Dean had volunteered any information about his father.

“Really! That’s so interesting. What does your dad do?” If he says his father kills people, Shania thought, I’m going to quit teaching and get a desk job somewhere because I cannot deal with this.

“He’s a hunter.”

Oh. Well. That was a relief. John Winchester had probably been wearing that getup when he posed with a dead deer or whatever it was that hunters did. Which meant that was deer blood flaking onto her floor. With a sigh of relief, and possibly also some frustration, she sent Dean into the room to join the party that Miss Jebbins was supervising.

The second thing that happened that day: the results of Dean’s evaluation came in and, sure enough, he was dyslexic. Shania immediately vowed to put together a packet of resources for whoever was raising the kid, because he was a smart kid, and she didn’t want something like this to hold him back.

At the end of the day, as she led the class in singing the clean-up song and in getting ready to go home, she couldn’t help but notice something was off about Dean. He lingered in the classroom after everyone else had left.

When she turned from her desk, adding a couple of books to the packet she was making up for him, she saw him standing behind her. He was chewing nervously on his lip, and one foot was anxiously scuffing the carpet. “You all right there, sugar?”

He rushed toward her and threw his arms around her. She froze in shock at the unexpected action from the usually taciturn young man, then softly hugged him back. His voice was muffled by her sweater, but she thought she heard “Thanks for caring. An’ for seeing me.”

Dean stepped back, his eyes glassy with tears. He swiped at them, then flinched as his hand made contact with the black eye he swore up and down came from walking into a door. “Dean…” she said, quietly. “You know if there’s anything wrong, you can talk to me. I’ll help you.”

Dean nodded jerkily as she handed him the parcel of materials and told him what it was for. Then, a sob catching in his throat, he spun on his heel and was out the door.

Dean wasn’t there the next day. Shania trekked over to the preschool rooms, and looked for tiny, floppy-haired Sam. No sign of either of them.

Two weeks later, Mrs. Lancaster told Shania that the Winchester boys’ father had withdrawn them from the school, and could she please write up a final grade report for wherever they ended up next?

So she did, but she just couldn’t get Dean out of her head.

He had been so fragile, trying to project a strong persona for his little brother but god, he was only a child himself. She thought about big, tear filled green eyes, and a carefully concealed limp, and bruises he tried so hard to hide.

Suddenly, she knew why they were gone. She had reported to CPS, and John Winchester, fearing being caught, had taken his sons and left.

Shania taught for the rest of the year, but her heart wasn’t in it. She couldn’t be a teacher. She couldn’t watch hurting children come through her classroom if she was unable to help them.

Every day, the memory of Dean’s last words to her, and the tremble in his voice as he’d said them, haunted her.


	3. Chapter 3

At the end of the school year. Shania did something very stupid that would probably cost her her job. She really didn’t care if it did.

She accessed the school’s records, and found Bobby Singer’s address. He was a five hour drive away. And so, with a determined huff, Shania climbed into her VW Beetle and took off.

Six and a half hours (and a few wrong turns) later, she found herself staring at a salvage yard.

She double-checked the map.

Yeah, this was the place.

She parked her car, straightened her hair which didn’t really need it, and marched up onto the creaky porch. A dog, snoozing in the dust off to the side of the door, raised one ear and let out a low growl. Shania rapped smartly on the door.

A gruff voice from inside snapped “Whaddaya want?”

“Mister Singer? I’m here on behalf of Dean Winchester.” Shania gulped, hoping she wasn’t about to get murdered by a child trafficking ring or whatever John Winchester was a part of.

The silence coming from the inside of the house was almost suspicious. She had the distinct feeling that she was being evaluated, and was coming up short. Then she heard shuffling feet and the door swung open.

A handful of salt was thrown at her almost immediately, going by the can of Morton’s in the hand of the man standing in front of her.

She spluttered, offended, for a moment, then remembered her mission. “Sir, I’m here to ask if you know anything about Sam and Dean Winchester. Dean was in my class this past year, but he vanished. I’m worried.” She tried very hard not to think about all the ways this could go wrong. 

“Why you wanna know?”

“Look, Mister, do you know where they are or not? Because I don’t want them hurting and I don’t trust that John Winchester.” Oh dear lord, she was so totally going to die…

Mr. Singer let out a gruff chuckle. “Me either. S’why I chase him away with a shotgun when he comes too close.” He leaned toward her, squinted. “You must be Ms. McAlister. Come on in.” And he opened the door wide.

Shania, hoping he was trustworthy, came on in.

“The boys are upstairs, getting into God knows what kinds of trouble. Beer?” Shania declined, hoping Mr. Singer would elaborate on that a bit. He did. “John and I used to be real good friends, but he got so caught up in trying to get revenge on whatever it was what killed his wife he forgot to care about the people he still had left.”

Shania didn’t know what possessed her to ask this of all questions, but she did. “Mr. Singer, why doesn’t Sam talk?”

“Call me Bobby. And you’re gonna think I’m crazy, but all those things that go bump in the night? They’re real. Skinwalkers and ghosts and wendigos and what have you? All out there, and one of those monsters killed Mary Winchester, and John’s devoted his life to hunting them down.”

Shania was starting to understand why Dean had been such a traumatized child. She was also starting to wonder what kind of blood he’d been wearing on Halloween.

Bobby continued, “Once John took the boys on a hunt. Sam started crying, don’t know why, and John flew into a rage at him. Told him if he made noise on a hunt they’d all be dead, and Sam would be the reason why they never caught what killed his Mommy.” He took a healthy swig of his beer, then “He’s talking now, though. To Dean, mostly.”

Shania cleared her throat. Okay. Monsters were real, apparently, and Dean had been trained by his father to hunt them. She felt a distinctly hysterical laugh bubbling up, and squashed it. “So they live here now? They’re safe with you?”

Bobby nodded sagely. “As safe as anyone gets in this world.” Then he raised his voice slightly. “Dean!”

With a clatter of feet, Dean himself descended the staircase and flung himself at Shania, babbling. “Hi I’m so happy to see you again, and thanks so much for all that stuff to help me read it’s really useful and now I can read to Sammy, and thanks for making the school scare Dad away so we can live with Uncle Bobby, and --”

“Whoa, sugar!” She cut him off, laughing. “You gotta breathe in there somewhere.” 

And then she sat and listened to how they’d used to hunt with Dad, and he’d leave Dean to take care of Sammy in motel rooms for days but now they had a room all their own with Uncle Bobby, and how sometimes when Dad had gotten mad he’d hit Dean, never Sammy because Dean would never let Sammy get hurt, but now they were here and Uncle Bobby got Dean a Batmobile toy, and gave Sammy books, and showed Dean how to work on cars, and said he couldn’t hunt now but maybe when he was older, and come  _ on _ Ms. McAlister, you gotta come see how good Sammy is doing!

Laughing, she followed him up the stairs, where Sammy shyly showed her a book he was reading and very seriously described the island where the wild things lived, but in the book, because in real life, the wild things were everywhere and someday he was gonna be like Dean and kill them.

Secure in the knowledge that the boys were safe, if a little bit crazy, Shania returned to her car, then to her home, then to her teaching job.

She did, of course, drive out and visit occasionally. The boys and Uncle Bobby were always glad to see her. Eventually, the visits tapered off, and the green eyed boy and his shy brother faded into her memory.

She was still teaching twenty-one years later when two hulking men swaggered into her classroom after class had been dismissed, and asked her if she’d noticed any strange noises or cold spots.

“Dean?” She asked, certain that she’d know those eyes anywhere. “Dean Winchester?”

He nodded, almost sheepishly, and tossed her a little smile.

“So you did become a hunter.” She’d eventually concluded that Bobby had been telling the truth and monsters were real. She’d then doubled down hoping and praying that the two lost little boys she’d had the fortune to meet would manage to leave the hunter’s life.

“I always was gonna be.” Dean looked like he knew what she was thinking. He jerked his head at Sam, who had gone from possibly the tiniest child she’d ever seen to quite probably the largest man. “This one got out for a while, though. Made it to Stanford.” The quiet pride in his voice was all the confirmation she needed to know that Dean Winchester was always going to look after his Sammy.

Maybe, she thought, even though they’re hunters, they’ll do okay. Maybe they’ll get to grow old, and retire, and turn into gruff old men like Bobby someday. They could have a worse life.

She didn’t quite know how to say all that, though, so she settled for “You know my door is always open for you boys.” After all, she couldn’t save every child that came through her classroom doors, but maybe she could still help these two.


End file.
